


Aubade

by LordofLies



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Character Study, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Other, Past Sexual Abuse, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 07:06:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7834957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LordofLies/pseuds/LordofLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au·bade  (ō-bäd′) n.<br/>1. A song concerning, accompanying, or evoking daybreak.<br/>2. A morning love song.</p><p>“I know that there is something new, and bright, and good inside you,” Wing said softly.  “Change is never easy, but I believe in you.  And I’m here to help you, if I can.  If you want me to.”</p><p>Drift gripped his hand over Wing’s, pressing it tight to his chest.</p><p>“You sound so sure you know what’s inside me.  What if you’re wrong?”</p><p>“I’m not wrong.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aubade

**Author's Note:**

> I love this ship so much.

It was always bright in New Crystal City.

Day and night did not exist underground, only a perpetual, artificial light that sapped at Drift’s spark bit by bit.  Even the void of space was preferable to this.  There, at least, he could always see the stars.

It was this lack of some kind of solar cycle—or the shifting of stars out his hab suite window as they moved from one sector of the galaxy to another—that most reminded Drift that he was stuck, stagnant, in a city that was in every way as artificial as its luminance.

The only thing that seemed genuine to him was his warden, Wing.  Like himself, Drift knew that Wing did not belong sealed beneath the stone.  This city was as much a crypt as it was a utopia.  Only the dead do not change.  He knew that Wing had left the city many times prior to the excursion that had crossed his path with Drift’s, and that every time he had been reprimanded for breaking the city’s first rule: no one was allowed in, and no one was allowed out. 

How Wing was still whole and allowed to move freely through the city was a mystery to Drift.  If the flier had been a decepticon in a similar situation, he surely would have been offlined vorns ago.  Rules seemed to bend to Wing’s will with an effortless, supernatural obedience.  Not just those of the city, but those that Drift had set for himself as well.  Despite his best efforts, Wing had begun to sink his roots in him.

Morning came, as it did every cycle on this world, though Drift could not feel the radiation of the planet’s sun so deep beneath its surface.  Feeling strangely sluggish, he lay there on the berth— _his_ berth, Wing had told him when he was first brought here, months ago.  After a while, he heard a knock at his door.

“Drift?” Wing called, “Are you online?”

Drift sighed, pulling himself up and off the berth.  He didn’t want to stay in this windowless cell anymore.

“I am,” he answered, opening the door.  Wing smiled at him, bright as a star, and beckoned him over to the common space.

“I prepared some morning energon for you,” Wing said, gesturing towards the cube on the table.  Drift didn’t know why he bothered to tell him every morning, it was always there for him when he awoke.  Wing was a perpetually early riser, even when Drift didn’t try to put the inevitable day off just a little longer.

“Thanks,” he said anyway, as always.  Swallowing a sigh, he wondered vaguely what was in store for him that day.  Sparring, most likely, but there was always the chance that Wing would drag him around the city or try to teach him something useless or patronizing with that infuriating, earnest smile of his.  Why was he always so happy?  No one had any right to be that happy all the time.  If he didn’t know better by now, he’d say that it was faked.  But no, Wing was just a perpetually cheery person.  Although he refused to acknowledge it, Drift envied him for it.  What must this mech’s life have been like that such easy joy was his default?  From the moment he’d onlined his optics, Drift’s life had been a struggle.  Joy did not survive the shame of the gutters.  Optimism did not survive the senseless violence the streets.  Compassion did not survive the revolution.

“I thought I might take you somewhere new today,” Wing announced once Drift had nearly finished drinking his cube.

“Oh?” Drift said, trying to sound as disinterested as possible, if just to see the flier’s stabilizers droop.  Frustratingly, Wing seemed unfazed.

“It’s a very sacred place for us.  One of the oldest structures in this city, a perfect replica of the original that existed back on Cybertron.  Usually it is empty, but today there is a special event taking place—one that I think you will enjoy.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Drift said smoothly.  _Frown_ , he thought, _do something, anything other than smile.  You won’t change me.  You don’t control me._

Wing just smiled at him, and Drift felt a strange heat that was only partially anger swell up inside his chassis.

~*~

When they were almost in sight of their destination, Wing turned back to observe Drift.  The grounder had that look of forced disinterest he sported whenever he wanted to make Wing feel discouraged.  In a way, it worked, though Drift did not know it.  Wing knew that his charge was unhappy.  He knew that the decepticon felt trapped in New Crystal City, that he wanted his freedom.  Wing understood that desire.  He felt it himself, on occasion.  It was why he left the city every so often, despite knowing that there would be consequences when he returned. 

At the same time, Wing was determined to show Drift that the city had so much to offer him.  Security, compassion, and a respite, if only a temporary one, from what he knew had been a long and weary life.  Drift was a mech who had known only one mode of existence—survival.  When all his needs were met, he didn’t know what to do with himself.  He was restless and dissatisfied.  All he seemed to take pleasure in were their training sessions, and those were often mingled with frustration as the grounder struggled to learn a style of combat that was vastly different from the one he’d used for millions of years.  He was progressing quickly, but still no match for Wing.

Wing didn’t want him to wait day and night for their training sessions while showing a complete lack of interest in anything else.  He wanted to show Drift that life could shine, that the universe was beautiful, that life was beautiful, and that living and surviving were very different things.  So far, though, his attempts to introduce Drift to art, philosophy, literature, and ritual had been less than successful.  The grounder found most of the above subjects dull, pointless, and unengaging.  He had no patience for meditation, no mind for metaphor and symbolism, and no understanding of personal expression save through violence or direct speech.

Today’s trip was a last, desperate attempt to reach out to this closed off, damaged mech.  Wing prayed that it would bring some kind of understanding to his guest.

“Here we are,” he said to Drift as they approached the entrance of the building.  Drift looked impressed, despite himself.  He craned his neck to look up toward the central tower, ringed with pillars.  A column of brilliant white light flowed up through the center of the building and vanished into the arch of the cavern ceiling.  It illuminated the entire city, and Drift had been quietly wondering what exactly the building was ever since he arrived.

“What is it?” he asked as they climbed the white stone steps toward the entrance.

“A place of worship.  A shrine to Primus.”

“I’m not religious,” Drift said, frowning.

“You don’t have to be.  Art can be enjoyed for the thing itself, regardless of the drive behind its creation.”

 _Great_ , thought Drift, _more paintings_.  Upon entering the shrine, however, Drift found himself awash in confusion.  The interior of the building was a massive, circular room ringed by a platform of stone upon which he and Wing stood.  Down a flight of steps and through a wall of pillars, in the very center of the building, was a well from which a fountain of light erupted, streaming up through a hole in the domed ceiling.  As they descended the stairs, he also noticed that the walls of the building were entirely covered in an elaborate pattern of pipes, some of metal, some of glass, which encircled the room and wound up towards the ceiling.  They bent and twisted in different directions like a frenzy of snakes.

“What are those?” he asked, pointing towards the pipes.  Wing smiled that infuriating smiled.

“You will see.”

They descended into the lowest part of the room, where a number of other mechs had already gathered, and Wing guided him over to one side, leaning against a pillar.

“What now?”

“Now we wait,” Wing replied, watching the light pour up from some unknown source.  Drift took his place leaning on the pillar beside him.  He hated waiting, but Wing must have timed things well, because he did not have to wait long.

Out of nowhere, a chime sounded.  It resonated deep inside Drift, making his plating tremble and his spark stutter.  The column of light drew thin and then swelled, white bleeding away into a dark, navy blue.  The room plunged into darkness, tinted blue by the strange, dark light.  Another deep chime sounded, and the blue light became purple.  The entire room vibrated, and Drift felt his body fill with sound. 

It was the pipes, he realized, as the chiming grew and grew, swelling like an ocean wave, like a sun before a supernova.  This building, this room, was a giant instrument, and Drift could feel the song of it resonating with his very spark.  He glanced at Wing, who was gazing in rapture at the light, now a vibrant green quickly changing to yellow, and felt a pang of guilt like a blade in his side.

Wing had tried—every moment of every day he’d spent here—to make him happy in this place.  He did so of his own will, against the wishes of his leaders, and despite Drift’s ungrateful, antagonistic behavior.  Drift knew from personal experience that the motivations of others were always selfish, no matter what front they put up in the beginning.  It was completely bewildering to him that Wing seemed to want nothing from him, except for Drift to understand something that the grounder could not yet quite grasp.

He looked back up at the light, shifting from one brilliant shade to another, while the music swelled around him, rising and falling, filling up his hollow frame with the songs of the wind and the stars.

It was beautiful.  It was the most beautiful thing that Drift had ever heard.  It was like light itself— _life_ itself—was singing to him, and his spark could do nothing but sing back.  And suddenly he realized, with the hot surge of a jack locking into a socket, that he _was_ the light—that they all were.  Every cybertronian was the spark inside them, not the vessels that contained them.  Without the spark, a frame was just a shell.  This performance was an echo of life itself, a reflection of the ones who had created it.  They were living light, singing and shifting, united in their brilliance.

As the music finally began to ebb, and the light calmed to its steady white flow, Drift felt himself come down from a surge of emotions he had been wholly unprepared for.  His frame trembled, optics wide and bright, still watching those colors dance before them.

“Are you alright?” Wing’s soft voice came from beside him, accompanied by a gentle touch on his arm.  He looked over at Wing, his golden optics shining, concern written across his face.  And beneath it, a fragile hope.

This time, Drift realized that he’d rather snuff out his own spark than rip that hope away from Wing.

“Yes,” he said, voice hoarse.  He licked his lips, still reeling from the experience.

“Did you like it?”

“I..” He didn’t know what to say.  “Like” didn’t come close to what he was feeling.  This was beyond like and dislike, love and hate.  This was an experience—a moment of clarity so profound that Drift knew that he would guard the memory of it for the rest of his life.  He shuttered his optics.

“I’d like to go back,” he said quietly.  When he opened them again, Wing was giving him a concerned look.  He knew that Drift had been affected, but he did not know whether it had been positive or negative.  Drift was not sure himself.  He followed the flier out of the building and into the streets.  The artificial light felt different now that he had seen what it could become, now that his own spark had sung in harmony with it.  He felt connected to something greater than himself in a way he had not since he was first inducted into the ranks of the decepticons, a feeling of unity which had long-since passed.

He watched Wing’s back, trailing just behind him as they wove through the city streets back to Wing’s apartment.  The flier’s hips swayed as he walked, plating clinking against the greatsword strapped against his back.  Wing glanced back at him, smiling, and before Drift realized what he was doing, he smiled back.  Wing practically beamed, his smile widening, optics glowing warmly, and Drift felt heat bloom inside his chest.

Wing was beautiful.  More beautiful than any mech Drift had ever seen, in frame and in spark.  He was staggered by the realization—driven, metaphorically, to his knees.  He wanted to reach out to the other mech, to let their sparks sing together as his spark had sung with the light of the shrine.  But to merge sparks—that was too intimate, too terrifying.  It would strip down every wall between them.  No secrets, nothing left untouched, no boundaries uncrossed.  No, he could not allow such a thing, he could not want such a thing.  His spark and mind were his own.  No one could take them from him.  He would rather die.

But there were other ways that two mechs could intertwine.  Drift knew that all too well, and he swallowed his revulsion as the memories curdled at the edge of his processor.  This was different, a different kind of desire.  It was his own, not forced upon him by another.

He wanted to spurn Wing more than anything.  He wanted to pass the other mech off as someone who had never known hardship, who didn’t understand how the world worked outside this shining, hidden refuge.  But he knew that Wing as at least as old as he was, that he remembered Cybertron before the war, with all its misery and corruption, gilded with excess and opulence.  Wing had seen pain and suffering and he strove to relieve it wherever he could, whether it was freeing slaves or rescuing Drift. 

The decepticon felt that there were times when Wing could gaze directly into his spark—past anger, hatred, fear, and shame to a bright, sheltered core of hope he didn’t dare to speak of.  He wanted to hope, more than anything, for the future he had been promised four million years ago.  For a life where he had power over his own destiny, where he didn’t have to look over his shoulder, where he could feel as though he belonged.  No longer an outsider.

Wing kindled that hope, and Drifted hated him for it.  He didn’t want to change, he wanted to cling to his anger.  It made him strong.  If he loosened his grip, if he lowered his barriers, he didn’t know if he would be able to withstand the pain of betrayal.

~*~

When they returned to Wing’s apartment, Drift took his preferred seat on the balcony, looking out over the city and the pillar of light that illuminated it.  He sat there for ages, until Wing finally approached him and asked if he would like to spar that day.  Drift looked up at Wing, the too-familiar struggle between longing and suspicion, hope and anger, desire and disgust, flared to life within him.  He nodded, hoping that maybe it would take the edge of his mental anguish.

It turned out, however, that his processor wasn’t in the battle once their pedes hit the sparring ring.  He knew that Wing wouldn’t ever intentionally hurt him, so his self-preservation instincts occupied only a small part of his processor.  He was unfocused, still reeling from his earlier epiphany, and the dawning realization that he wanted more from Wing than he felt he was ready for.  His gaze lingered on Wing, not in anticipation of his movements, but in appreciation.  He was so distracted by the fluid grace of the flier’s technique that he found himself flat on his back with Wing’s pede on his chest before he’d even formulated how to respond to the other’s attack.

“You’re slow today,” Wing remarked, lifting his pede off of Drift’s chassis and helping him to his feet.  “Are you sure you’re feeling up to it?  We don’t have to.”

Drift felt a flush of shame heat up his cheeks.  He didn’t want Wing’s pity or his accommodations.  If Drift wasn’t on the ball, he would deal with it, and suffer the consequences.

“I don’t need you to go easy on me.  Come at me.  I can take it.”  Wing frowned.

“I don’t think we’re going to make any progress today.  Besides, it’s getting late.  We should go home.”

“I’m fine!  I’ll show you!” Drift snarled, stepping to the side before running at Wing, who dodged his attack with fluid grace.  He danced just out of Drift’s reach, making the grounder feel slow and clumsy and witless.  It infuriated him, and it infuriated him even more that Wing could bring him to anger so quickly.  Every attack Drift made, even the ones he thought through, was artfully blocked or dodged by Wing, until the grounder felt like a turbofox chasing its own tail.  He wanted to grasp the flier and never let him go, drag him down to the earth, tether him, chain him, bind him.

As soon as that thought flickered through Drift’s processor, he felt himself falter.  He shuttered his optics.  How sick, how selfish of him.  To wish a cage upon another, when he struggled so violently against his own.  He didn’t deserve Wing’s compassion or his patience.  He didn’t deserve any of this.  Maybe that’s why he felt so foreign in this city.  It was clean and white and he was still caked in the filth of the gutters.  He could never shake free of it.

He collapsed down on his knees in the dust, head bowed and palms flat against the stone.

“Drift?” Wing called.  The grounder didn’t have to look up to see the look of concern on his face.  He could hear it in his voice, sense it in the other mech’s electromagnetic field.  “Drift what’s wrong?”

“I could feel the light,” he admitted finally.  “I could feel my spark singing with it, reaching for it.  I…”  Drift brought a hand up to cover his mouth, hiding the way grief twisted his fair face into something ugly.  “I don’t deserve this.”

Wing said nothing, but Drift sensed the flier approach him, felt his warm servos laid against his shoulders, drawing him upwards.  He looked up into those golden optics, and felt his spark tugged out of his chest.  He wanted Wing, despite all the reasons he shouldn’t.  He wanted the other mech desperately, wanted to feel Wing surrounding him, to drown in the heat of his frame the light of those gentle optics.  Heat buzzed through his frame, lust and rage fighting viciously inside him.

“You deserve so much more than what life has given you,” Wing murmured, his soft lips parted, so close to Drift’s own.  He longed to connect them, but fear held him back.  “Come.  Let’s go home.”

Joints weak, Drift allowed Wing to raise him to his feet and lead him away from the sparring ring and back to Wing’s apartment.  The artificial light had dimmed to something soft and cool by the time they returned, as if it slept.  Drift followed Wing in a haze, struggling valiantly against his overwhelming desire for connection, for acceptance, for _Wing_.

“What can I give you?” Wing asked when they were finally alone in the flier’s apartment.  “What do you need?”  His voice was so sweet and bewilderingly earnest, that Drift felt that last vestiges of his self-control crumble away like corroded steel.

“You,” Drift answered, stripped bare by his honesty.  This truth would give Wing power over him.  It filled him with fear.

Wing smiled at him, but his face was full of sadness.

“Are you sure that’s what you want?” Wing asked, shocking Drift.

“I’m not,” Drift answered, truthfully.

“You’re my ward.  I have a responsibility to your wellbeing, physical and emotional.  I don’t want to abuse the power I have in this relationship.”

“I’m a prisoner,” Drift corrected sharply, wanting his words to cut.

“Yes,” Wing admitted, and Drift felt a mix of satisfaction and unhappiness at the guilt that colored Wing’s field at that confession.  “But only in your inability to leave.  You don’t have to do anything here that you don’t want to do.  You don’t have to stay with me.  You don’t have to do anything I tell you to do.  You have no obligation to me.  Everything you do here, I want you to know that it must be of your own volition.”

“I don’t understand you,” Drift said, pacing back and forth across the floor.  “Why are you doing this?  What do you want from me?  What are you hiding?”

“I only want you to be happy.”

“Then let me leave!”

“Will that make you happy?”

“Yes!” Drift cried.

“Are you sure?”

Drift struggled with himself.  He thought about the cold, empty void of space.  He thought about Turmoil, and his time with the decepticons.  He thought about Gasket, about the degradation and humiliation of the gutters.  He thought of the darkness of the Dead End, of the darkness of the decepticon fleet, of the darkness he could feel seething inside himself. 

He closed his eyes.  But instead of darkness, he saw the gentle spark-light of the shrine.  How had he seen it is as fake before?  Were his eyes so maladjusted to the light?  The shrine illuminated this whole city; it had sung to him like he was important, like he was connected, like he _belonged_.  His insides clenched.  He felt weak, stupid.  Because, god, he _wanted_ it.  He wanted to live inside that light, to feel accepted, to feel _safe_.  It was a desire he’d thought he purged himself of long ago, but Wing had slowly been stripping him of the armor he’d built around himself for millions of years.

“No!  I’m not sure!” he cried, raking a hand down the front of his chassis.  If it had been Deadlock’s hand, he would have gouged right through the metal, but these were Drift’s hands—weak, blunted.  His fingertips barely scratched the paint.  “I’m not sure about anything anymore.  I don’t know what I’m doing!  I don’t know why I’m doing anything.  I’m angry, I—“ He paused, struggling to find a way to articulate what he was feeling.

“It’s going to be okay,” Wing assured him, his voice soothing.  “This is just one trial down the road to discovering who you really are.”  Wing took a step closer to him and gingerly laid a hand on the front of Drift’s chest, over his spark and the scratches he’d left in his paint.

“I know that there is something new, and bright, and good inside you,” Wing said softly.  “Change is never easy, but I believe in you.  And I’m here to help you, if I can.  If you want me to.”

Drift gripped his hand over Wing’s, pressing it tight to his chest.

“You sound so sure you know what’s inside me.  What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not wrong.”

Drift raised himself up so Wing had to tilt his head back to look him in the optics.  He pressed their frames together, letting Wing feel the heat of his armor, particularly that of his interface panel, which had been climbing in temperature for the last few cycles.  Wing’s vents hitched, but his optics remained steady with Drift’s.

“You forced yourself into my life.  You started out believing you could change me.  I didn’t get a say.  You decided what was best for me.  And I know that it’s working.  You _are_ changing me.  I can feel it.  You’ve gotten inside me and I can’t get you out.”  He slid a leg between Wing’s, grinding his thigh against the flier’s panel.  “Maybe you should learn what it’s like to have another person force their way inside you.”

Hurt, not fear, flashed across Wing’s face.

“I won’t help you vindicate your capacity for cruelty to yourself, Drift,” he said.  “I know that you don’t want to rape me.”

Drift recoiled, withdrawing his leg from between Wing’s and breaking off eye contact.

“What do you really want?” Wing asked, his voice still infuriatingly gentle, as though he were trying to soothe a wild animal.

“I want you!” Drift cried, grasping uselessly at the air, as if it would help ground him.  “But I hate that I want you!  I don’t understand my own feelings anymore.  I want to believe that you mean what you say, but I can’t!  Everyone is selfish.  Everyone lies.  I know you can’t be different, but I want you to be!  I want what I can’t have, and I’m angry with myself because I thought I learned my lesson!  I thought I was done wanting the impossible.  I thought I killed that hope!”

Wing reached up with his free hand to stroke the side of Drift’s face gently.

“Hope is resilient,” he said with a smile.  “The slightest breath can reignite what you thought were only ashes.  What you choose to believe is up to you.  I can only offer you my word—that I mean what I say and that I would never willingly or knowingly hurt you, or try to make you do something that runs contrary to who you are.”

Drift looked down at him, his optics wide and blue and beautiful.  Inside them Wing could see that hope, flickering, risen from the dead.

“I _do_ believe you,” Drift said, quietly.  His whole frame shuddered.  He bowed his head, optics shuttered tight.  “I want to feel… connected.  I don’t want to be alone.”

Wing pressed their frames close again, wrapping his arm tight around Drift.

“You’re not alone,” he said gently.  “Whatever you need, I will give it to you.  You only have to ask.”  Drift reeled.

“I want to touch you.”

He didn’t expect Wing’s breathy sigh, or the slight tremble in his frame.  “Please,” the flier said, eyes shuttered low. 

Drift reached out to curl a hand over the back of Wing’s helm, bringing their mouths together in a hard kiss.  Wing melted against him, their frames fitting together like the cogs of a machine.  He pressed his glossa against Wing’s lips, and the flier opened his mouth for him, moaning into the kiss as Drift explored the inside of his oral cavity.  He allowed Wing’s glossa to explore his own mouth, and felt him shudder when the flier traced over Drift’s sharp fangs.  He kissed and licked and sucked at Wing’s mouth until both their vents were blasting hot air.  When he finally drew back he could see that Wing’s grey face was flushed lavender with energon, a string of drool shimmering on his chin.

“Should we move?” Wing asked, tracing his fingers lightly down Drift’s sides.  The grounder nodded, remembering the open door to the balcony not ten meters from them.  He allowed Wing to lead him to his quarters, where he shut the door behind them and pushed Wing down onto his berth.  There was a fire burning inside that he couldn’t keep down any longer.  Wing moaned as Drift licked a trail down the ridge of his chest.

“Are you wet already?” Drift purred as he cupped Wing’s interface panel, feeling the scalding heat of it.

Wing cried out softly, bucking into Drift’s touch.  With a click, he retracted the panel, revealing his glistening white and red valve.  The lips were swollen and the bright golden node at the peak shimmered wetly with the jet’s lubricants.  Liquid arousal pooled in Drift’s belly at the sight.  He couldn’t believe Wing had become this aroused just from being close to him.  Gently, Drift dipped two fingers inside the glistening valve, sliding them between the folds and drawing another sweet cry from Wing.  Drift hadn’t expected this strong of a reaction and the sight of Wing’s obvious desire made it impossible to keep his own panel closed anymore.

His spike pressurized, modesty plating retracting to reveal his own interface equipment.  He hauled himself up onto the berth over Wing, reaching down between them to continue to finger Wing’s valve.  Their spikes bumped together pleasurably every time Wing arched his spinal strut into Drift’s touches.  The inside of Wing’s valve was soft, mesh slick as it constricted against his fingers.  He thrust them in and out slowly, scissoring and stretching, watching as Wing’s face contorted with pleasure and desire.

“Drift,” he murmured, optics glowing bright.  Drift felt his spark stutter.  Wing was so, _so_ beautiful.  It almost hurt to look at him.  With a heightened sense of urgency, Drift hauled his hips a little further up Wing’s body and leaned down to kiss him again.  His hand wandered up from Wing’s valve to stroke his spike, drawing long, breathy whines from the other mech.  He felt Wing’s hands slide over the curve of his hips and down the backs of his thighs as Wing rutted slowly against him, lubricant beginning to slick their bellies.

Drift became so lost in the surreal sensations of Wing’s glossa sliding against his own and Wing’s spike in his hand that he didn’t notice where Wing’s hands had gone.  When he felt a finger tracing the wet opening of his valve, his body locked up tighter than a bowstring.  Wing, sensing the change, paused his ministrations, his fingertip still resting on the slick edge of Drift’s valve.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly.

“I don’t—I can’t—“ Drift stammered, trying to draw his hips away from Wing’s touch.  He bowed his head, unable to look the other mech in the optics.  “Don’t touch me there…” he whispered, fear and shame tainting the bright arousal in his EM field.  He’d fought too long and too hard, and done too many terrible things, to ever allow himself to feel violated in that way again.  In an instant, Wing withdrew his hand, and Drift allowed himself to relax, still trembling with anxiety.

“Drift, Drift...” he murmured, stroking Drift’s finials soothingly and drawing Drift’s gaze back to him.  “I meant what I said, I won’t ever hurt you.”

“I know,” Drift whispered, still bewildered by Wing’s sincerity.  Wing smiled, leaning up to bump the crest of his helm gently against Drift’s.  Carefully, he wiggled out from under Drift, scooting back closer to the head of the berth.  Drift was about to ask what he was doing when Wing let his thighs fall apart, displaying his slick, soft valve for the grounder.  With a needy sound, Wing slid his fingers through the valve lips, spreading them suggestively and rocking his hips.  With the valve on full display, Drift could see the ring of mesh just inside contract wantonly, hungry to be filled.

“Please, Drift,” Wing moaned, rubbing at his anterior node and triggering a spasm of contractions.  “Please spike me.”  A flush of embarrassment colored his cheeks.  “I want to feel you inside me.”

Drift’s belly tightened in shock and arousal, discomfort forgotten.  His spike twitched, dripping transfluid and eager to comply with Wing’s desire, but Drift found himself both mesmerized and paralyzed.  He couldn’t wrap his mind around it, couldn’t understand how Wing could so willingly submit to him.  This mech was an enigma—willingly offering something that Drift himself had only allowed to be taken in exchange for energon, money, or drugs. 

Among the decepticons, like on the streets, interfacing had been another kind of power play.  Deadlock would have gutted any mech that tried to have their way with him.  Even if the rules had been a little different, the game was still the same.  And yet here Wing was—with a single word, a single act, tearing down the whole system and inventing his own.

As if suddenly released from stasis, Drift slid forward, looming over Wing.  The flier tipped his head back, lips parted, trembling in anticipation.  Quickly, but carefully, Drift slid his fingers back into Wing’s valve, scissoring them to make sure that Wing was prepared enough for him.  The slick mesh walls of Wing’s channel gave way easily to him, dilated as it was with arousal.  Wing mewled and whined into his audial as he withdrew the dripping fingers and lined up the head of his spike.

“Do you even understand what you do to me?” Drift groaned, low and sultry into Wing’s throat.  “How long I’ve wanted to do this to you?”  He lifted Wing’s legs up by the crook of his knees and pressed the thick head of his spike against the valve.  There was barely any resistance before the head slid in with a wet pop.  Wing jolted with pleasure, keening and trembling, hips moving in little, aborted rotations, trying to draw Drift’s spike in deeper.  With a groan, Drift complied, and with a single push sank all the way to the hilt.

“Drift, oh!   _Drift_!” Wing cried, arching his spinal strut as Drift slid his spike back out slowly, then thrust in again.  Wing’s fingers scrabbled at the surface of the berth.  “Please, Drift!  I want to hold you…”

A flush of embarrassment colored Drift’s cheeks as he lowered Wing’s legs, letting them fall around his hips while Wing wrapped his arms around Drift’s back, panting hard into the grounder’s throat.

“Frag, Wing…” he groaned as the jet’s valve constricted around his spike, calipers tightening and sliding around him to stimulate as many nodes as it could.  He set a quick pace, thrusting in and out of Wing’s valve in a way that made the jet gasp and whine noisily.  Sometimes he pulled out all the way, just so he could feel the satisfying snap of tension as he slid back into the first ring of Wing’s valve.  From the little cries the jet made every time he did so, he wasn’t the only one who enjoyed it.

Wing was much louder than Drift had anticipated.  For such a quiet, collected mech, he seemed to entirely surrender control in the berth.  He moaned without restraint, desperate and wanton and hungry for Drift’s touch.  It was overwhelming, and more than a little mystifying, to be on the receiving end of such a shameless display of desire.  Drift himself had never enjoyed penetration during interface, but Wing seemed to take every opportunity to draw Drift deeper inside himself, to clutch at him with his valve and hold him so tightly that he could not escape.  It filled him with a wild, boiling heat.

“How does it feel?” Drift asked, thrusting forward to bury himself completely inside Wing’s valve.  “How does it feel to have me inside you?”

“It feels—ooh—it feels good,” Wing sighed, optics half-shuttered with arousal, his mouth open and panting in an attempt to cool his overheating systems.  “I feel full.  Connected.”  He drew Drift closer to him, pressing their chests together.  “I can feel your spark beating next to mine.”

Drift could feel it too.  Only their plating prevented the two of them, in their purest forms, from becoming one.  But when it came to something like a spark merge, feet were lightyears.  They had never been closer, but Wing was still far away.  Drift wasn’t sure if he would ever truly reach him.  There was still too much between them, and too much Drift didn’t understand.  He trusted Wing, but he didn’t feel any closer to understanding him.

As their pace continued to quicken, Drift began to feel the familiar bite of overload sinking into his belly.

“Wing,” he groaned, “I’m going to overload…”  Wing pulled his head down for a wet, intimate kiss.

“As am I,” he whispered, catching a stray thread of lubricant with his glossa.  His lips were parted, soft and shiny from kissing.  Hot, moist air blasted from their cooling vents as Drift thrust faster into Wing’s soaked valve.  The jet tightened his calipers to increase friction, loud squelching noises coming from the union of their frames.

“I’m so close,” Wing sighed into his audial as Drift gasped and groaned, steam rising from their overheated frames.  “Please, Drift… I want you…  I need you…”  Wing licked a long, sensual trail up the side of Drift’s throat, pleading with his whole frame to be offered release, and Drift found he couldn’t hold on anymore.  With a cry, overload jolted through his frame and he felt the hot release of transfluid join his spike inside Wing.

The hot, heavy feeling of Drift’s transfluid filling him tipped Wing over the edge into his own overload.  His valve convulsed and his optics surged bright white, mouth falling open in a silent cry of ecstasy as he rode out the overload on Drift’s slick spike.

Once the two of them had come down, trembling and venting heavily against each other, Drift pulled out of Wing.  He watched the silvery transfluid mixed with lubricant pool out of Wing’s swollen valve and onto the berth.  The flier lay on his back the recharge slab, quivering in the aftershocks of pleasure.

Even like this, Wing was still beautiful.  His legs were spread loosely, valve dripping and thighs smeared with the evidence of interfacing, but as he propped himself up on his hands, frame still trembling, his smile could have sparked life back into the dead. 

There was a radiance to him, pure and clean and whole, that only seemed to shine brighter now that they had interfaced.  Nothing about Wing was forced or faked.  He said what he meant, he did what he intended, and he expressed his feelings without fear or shame.  Even though Drift had been the one in control of the encounter, he felt naked and undone.  Wing had opened up to him.  Wing trusted him.  Wing cared about him.  Enough to help Drift when he hadn’t wanted help.  Enough to want this, to want Drift, despite everything Wing knew about him.  It was overwhelming.

He wouldn’t cry; he’d shed all his tears a long time ago.  But the raw ache in his spark that usually accompanied such moments of weakness weighed heavy on him.  He didn’t know what to do, what to think, what to say.  He was drowning.

“Drift?  Are you alright?” Wing asked, his radiant smile clouding.

“Why?” Drift asked, still kneeling on the berth in front of Wing.

“Why what?”

“Why did you let me do that?”  Wing’s look of concern deepened into apprehension.

“Because I believed we both wanted it.  Was I wrong?”  Drift shook his head.

“No, I—I wanted it.  But why did you?  How could you let me spike you so easily?  How could you enjoy it?”

“Because I care about you,” Wing answered.  “And I’m attracted to you.  You expressed discomfort at having your valve touched, so I assumed that you preferred to use your spike.  And I… enjoy valve stimulation.”  A hint of color had returned to Wing’s cheeks.

“I…” Drift floundered for what to say.  He came up wordless.

Wing smiled softly, closing his legs and scooting over towards Drift to draw him into an embrace.

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Wing assured him.  “I want you to be comfortable.  I want you to be happy.”  He kissed Drift chastely on the lips.

Drift remained silent.  A vortex of conflicting emotions swirled inside him, foremost confusion.  He still couldn’t wrap his processor around Wing.  He didn’t understand him at all.  They were so different.  Like day and night.  Drift was brash; Wing was patient.  Drift drove; Wing flew.  Drift guarded himself; Wing was open with others.  Drift held tight to resentment; Wing forgave.  Drift looked out for himself; Wing sacrificed his own needs for others.  Drift was dirty; Wing was pure.

They should have repelled each other.  The edges where they met should have been hard, sharp.  Instead, he felt himself soften when Wing touched him.  They mingled together like ink in water.  He knew that Wing was changing him, but from inside his own body it was hard to see how, or where those changes might eventually bring him.

“It’s just…  I’ve never interfaced with anyone like that before.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve never—“ Drift paused, frowning.  “It’s never been about the interfacing.  It was always about getting something.  Exploit or be exploited.  Interfacing was always… another kind of fighting.”  He wasn’t ready to tell Wing everything about his past.  He was blooming in Wing’s light.  He didn’t want Wing to look at him like something used, dirty.  He didn’t want Wing’s pity, or worse, his disgust.

“I’m sorry,” Wing said, pulling Drift down with him so that they were lying on their sides together.  Their thighs were still sticky with drying lubricants, but Drift couldn’t bring himself to care just yet.  Drift shrugged.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know.  But I wish things could have been different for you.  So many suffer in this life who don’t deserve it.  I only hope that maybe this experience has been a good one for you, and that maybe you will see interfacing as something different in the future than you did in the past.”

“A lot of things feel different to me now,” Drift admitted.  “I feel like I understand more today than I did yesterday.  About a lot of things.  But at the same time, I feel like there is more to understand than I realized.”

Wing huffed in amusement.

“That is the nature of learning.  The ignorant mech believes he knows all, while the wise one will readily confess he understands nothing.”

“That makes no sense.”  Drift shifted, propping his chin on top of Wing’s helm.  It felt right to hold Wing like this, to just be close to him and feel the reassuring heat of his frame.  Wing felt safe.  The last mech that made Drift feel safe enough to recharge next to had been Gasket.  And that had been a very long time ago.

“Life is full of contradictions.  We must learn to take them in stride, and to accept that we are complex, incongruous creatures with fallible natures.”

“Mmm, I think you read too much,” Drift replied.  “I’m tired.  Let’s recharge.”

“Agreed,” Wing replied, his optics dimming, casting a last, flickering golden light against Drift’s chest.  As he felt himself slip into recharge, suddenly the perpetual light of the city didn’t feel like an undying day.  It felt like morning.

~*~

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed the fic! Comments are always appreciated!


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